Shades of Austen in Ian Mcewan's Atonement

JASNA101-112.qxp:. 4/7/09 1:58 PM Page 101 y y Shades of Austen in Ian McEwan’s Atonement : u : JULIETTE WELLS Juliette Wells, an assistant professor of English at Man- hattanville College, is the author of several articles on Austen’s novels and her cultural legacy; she also co- edited The Brontës in the World of the Arts (2008). She is working on a book project about appropriations of Austen in contemporary popular culture. “Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspi - cions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English: that we are Christians. Consult your own un - derstanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpe - trated without being known in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is sur - rounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?” They had reached the end of the gallery; and with tears of shame she ran o ff to her own room. (McEwan xi; NA 197-98) T Northanger Abbey reproduced above appears as the epi - graph to Ian McEwan’s 2001 novel Atonement .1 McEwan’s decision to feature this Austen quotation has several e ffects. First, it encourages his readers to apply Henry Tilney’s words to Atonement as well as to identify parallels be - tween this novel and Austen’s work more generally. 2 War looms over 1930s JULIETTE WELLS Shades of Austen in Ian McEwan’s Atonement 101 JASNA101-112.qxp:. 4/7/09 1:58 PM Page 102 England in Atonement as it did in Austen’s own world, though the “atrocities” (NA 197) perpetrated in McEwan’s novel, including rape and war crimes, are much more horrible than anything depicted by Austen. So, too, the conse - quences of the mistaken “suspicions” and misinterpreted “observat ions” of Briony Tallis, McEwan’s young and over-imaginative heroine, which are far grimmer than those that result from Catherine Morland’s erroneous conclu - sions. (Unlike General Tilney, who proves himself capable of extreme lack of consideration if not outright cruelty, the man whom Briony accuses is indeed innocent and is jailed as a result of her testimony.) The action of the first of Atonemen t ’s three main parts takes place at a country estate that is, despite the modernity of its construction, reminiscent of those at the center of Austen’s novels. As in Mansfield Park , the young people’s behavior in Atonement is affected by the absence of the fathe r— in this case Jack Tallis, a government minister absorbed in concerns about the buildup to the second world wa r— and the retreat into illness of the mother, here a su fferer from migraines. In addition, McEwan’s choice of epigraph invites readers to consider more broadly what Atonement , which includes allusions to and pastiches of au - thors from throughout the English literary tradition, owes to Austen in par - ticular. 3 In interviews, McEwan himself has commented on this influence: Catherine Morland, the heroine of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey , was a girl so full of the delights of Gothic fiction that she causes havoc around her when she imagines a perfectly innocent man to be capable of the most terrible things. For many, many years I’ve been thinking how I might devise a hero or heroine who could echo that process in Catherine Morland, but then go a step further and look at, not the crime, but the process of atonement, and do it in writin g— do it through storytelling, I should say. (Noakes and Reynolds 20) To Newsweek , McEwan characterized his literary inspiration rather di ffer - ently, mentioning that he referred to Atonement in his notebooks as “‘my Jane Austen novel.’ I didn’t have Northanger Abbey or even Mansfield Park specifi - cally in mind, but I did have a notion of a country house and of some discrep - ancies beneath the civilized surface” (Giles 62). These interviews point us to two deeper levels on which to think about McEwan’s use of Austen, levels that remain as yet unexplored in criticism. He has gone “a step further” than Austen, crucially, by making Briony a novelist who, like Austen herself, began taking her writing seriously at a young age. What McEwan shows us of Briony’s youthful writin g— a rhyming, melodra - 102 PERSUASIONS No. 30 JASNA101-112.qxp:. 4/7/09 1:58 PM Page 103 matic playle t—is not especially suggestive of Austen’s own juvenilia. Yet McEwan’s characterization of Briony as being precociously concerned with language and the trappings of professionalism is certainly reminiscent of Austen, as of the other “child writers” whose work has recently been illumi - nated by Christine Alexander and Juliet McMaster. 4 McEwan’s description of Atonement as his “Jane Austen novel” (Giles 62), together with his many references to the British literary tradition within the work, raises further questions, especially for those readers well acquainted with Austen. To borrow the words used by Harriet Margolis in another con - text, “what does the name ‘Jane Austen’ authorize?” (Margolis 22). Or, in other words, what does it mean for a male British author, born in 1948, winner of the Booker Prize, to ally himself with Austen? How does his claim of a ffinity di ffer from other such claims, especially those made by contemporary writers of popular fiction? How does Atonement affect our understanding of Austen’s lit - erary legacy nearly two centuries after her death? Finally, ho w— if at al l— do Atonemen t ’s Austen allusions transfer to Joe Wright’s acclaimed film version of the novel, with which McEwan was closely involved? Underlying all these questions is Austen’s cultural legacy in our own era, derived from her writings as well as from the many adaptations of her work and even the projections of her “historical” self for a present-day popular audience. Indeed, for film view - ers and readers of contemporary novels, these versions of Jane Austen may outweigh any sense of her identity derived from her writing. “ ”: The very first thing that we learn about Briony Tallis in Atonement is that she is a dedicated writer with a keen and informed concern for the presen - tation of her work. “The pla y— for which Briony had designed the posters, programs, and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crêpe pape r— was writ - ten by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a break - fast and a lunch” (McEwan 3). With this first sentence of his novel, McEwan establishes the degree of Briony’s commitment to all aspects of her writing and its reception, a commitment on which he elaborates in the succeeding pages. So intense is Briony’s immersion in the process of writing that she will miss meals for it; McEwan later confirms that “Briony could not have been held back from her writing” (7). Briony’s control over the details of her play’s production, from publicity to ticket box, indicates both her familiarity with the conventions of the theater and the depth of her desire to take charge and im - JULIETTE WELLS Shades of Austen in Ian McEwan’s Atonement 103 JASNA101-112.qxp:. 4/7/09 1:58 PM Page 104 pose what McEwan subsequently calls her “love of order” (7). Briony’s deter - mined preparation for her play, however, proves unequal to the pressure of out - side events, and the performance she envisions does not come to pass. Even apart from the content of Briony’s play, what she shares with child writers from Austen forward is apparent. Like Austen and her siblings, whose theatricals at Steventon are well known, 5 Briony occupie s— or at least has cre - ated for hersel f— a world in which a beloved brother’s return from college is celebrated by the presentation of a homemade play, intended to be acted by family members (in this case, Briony’s cousins from the North, who are fleeing the fallout of their parents’ divorce). Carol Shields has speculated that Aus- ten’s youthful literary productions must have focused attention on her that would otherwise have been di fficult to attract in her “large and gifted house - hold” (29-30). Though Briony’s family is smaller than Austen’s, as the much- younger sibling she too seeks the notice and the appreciation of her family cir - cle. McEwan makes clear the degree to which Briony craves this approbation: having taken her just-finished play to her mother, Briony “studie[s] her mother’s face for every trace of shifting emotion” while she reads it and re - quests permission to quote her mother’s judgmen t—“stupendous ”—on one of the posters she has made (4). Not all the response that Briony receives from her family is as encouraging: her older sister Cecilia, who has recently gradu - ated from Cambridge with a degree in literature, mocks Briony by suggesting that “each bound story [should be] catalogued and placed on the library shelves, between Rabindranath Tagore and Quintus Tertullian” (7). While Briony senses and decides to “ignore” (7) her sister’s disdain, she does indulge fantasies of being admired one day as an author rivaling those in her family’s collection.

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